J.Y. Company
J.Y. Company (Chinese: ) or simply JY, was a publisher of various bootleg games, most notably Famicom games. They are best known for publishing many of Hummer Team's games. They appear to have been active from at least 1989 to possibly the mid 2000s. Overview J.Y. Company is mostly known for publishing Famicom ports that were developed by Hummer Team and Ei-How Yang. These ports are often regarded as being higher quality than most other bootleg Famicom ports. Many of these ports are often released with an extra hack of itself, usually on the same PCB as the original game. They also made a lot of multicarts, the most common are the 4 in 1. Some had more or less games but almost all of their multis don't have repeats. As well as this, many of them include late NES/Famicom releases rarely found on other multicarts such as Rainbow Islands and Mitsume Ga Tooru. J.Y. Company hardly ever hacked other publisher's titles. From 1994 to 1998, only two titles they weren't responsible for appeared on their multicarts: Super Donkey Kong 2 and ''Master Fighter II''. Often in their games, there's a screen containing their logo that can be accessed through a cheat code. Their logo may occasionally show up in the background of certain games as well. History J.Y. Company's earliest activities seems to point around 1989. J.Y. Company, part 2 During 1989 to 1993, they released pirated versions of licensed games under their own covers. They were also responsible for a few Mario hacks such as 7 Grand Dad and Super Bros. 8. They also made the infamous Ball Series 11 in 1 multicart in 1990 which was subsequently reprinted almost every year during the 90s, albeit not by them after a while. In late 1993, they started a new product line using their name to release mostly multicarts. In 1994, Hummer Team started developing games for J.Y. Company, the first games being ''Dragon Ball Z 2'' and ''Mortal Kombat II''. Around 1995, they've worked with Ei-How Yang but this didn't last very long, with only Mickey Mania 7 getting published while Contra Spirits never got a J.Y. Company release. Around 1995-1996, one of their supposed competitors, Ka Sheng, has started releasing several J.Y. Company carts under their own line. J.Y. Company & Ka Sheng relationship It's presumed that this was a deal between the two for J.Y. Company to sell their games in territories where Ka Sheng had more of a holding in. (Notably, Russia and Eastern Europe countries) However, this only lasted for several cartridges and Ka Sheng would eventually make mapper hacks of J.Y. Company's games afterwards, suggesting that the deal was ended for unknown reasons. J.Y. Company would request and provide funds to Hummer Team to make ports of popular games until 1998, when their relationship ended for unknown reasons. (It's been suggested that this is due to the Famicom market declining.) One of Hummer Team's games, The King of Fighters '96, was supposed to be released under J.Y. Company but ended up getting cut down and released by Ka Sheng instead. Afterwards, J.Y. Company started to release cheaper multicarts with common games, most of them sharing the same menu screen and the same games. These were likely done by a subcontractor since they lack all the technology used in the previous cartridges. These were all released under various IDs. Around this time, there were Game Boy Color cartridges being released using a label style similar to J.Y. Company's SC-xx carts. Notably, one of them use the QQ ID that J.Y. Company has also used. Some of these carts also contain games that Good Life have developed for and the single cart releases of those used similar PCBs. Several Super Famicom and Game Boy Advance multicarts have also used a similar label style. It's possible that J.Y. Company has attempted to release games for other consoles, as other companies were more interested in the Game Boy Color and the 16-bit consoles during this time. The Game Boy Advance multicarts also seem to have been programmed by or someone who used to work for Vast Fame, as the ROMs mentions Vast Fame's name. They ceased their Famicom activities in the early 2000s, selling their remaining PCBs to a Chinese distributor. It's unknown when J.Y. Company fully stopped their activities; the latest possible Game Boy Advance multicart contains the American version of Summon Night: Swordcraft Story which came out in 2006. Acronyms J.Y. Company has used a few aliases, most notably from 1997 and on-wards. *EL - Used after 1997 for some Hummer Team's games and a few multicarts. *SC - One of J.Y.'s aliases used after 1998. (SA, SB, SD were also used.) *QQ - Used to retail unsold stock of JY multicarts, was also used for Game Boy Color multicarts. *VIPxx, Nxx, Kxx (where xx is a number) - IDs around in the 2000. *YY - Used for board code and one release (YY-076), likely a typo in the latter case. Games Published Original Productions Hacks J.Y. Company are responsible for numerous hacks, they are probably behind more but here are the confirmed ones so far: Unconfirmed Games Unreleased Games These games were funded by J.Y. Company but released by different publishers. They also still contain the J.Y. Company logo easter egg, or part of it. Trivia *Hummer Team was credited as Jing Tay Team in Tiny Toon Adventures 6, with "Jing Tay" referring to J.Y. Company. *J.Y. Company was the first to make copies of Kirby's Adventure although they've hacked it into Wario Land 2. *Both Mortal Kombat II Special and Final Fight 3 seem to not be based off of their finished versions but rather prototype versions. This implies J.Y. Company had access to the prototype versions of their games and handed them to Hummer Team to port but it's unknown how they've gotten the prototypes. It's known however that prototypes and test builds were circulating on Japanese BBS channels around the same time. Gallery JY-003c.jpg|Typical J.Y. multicart. The overall same design was used from 1994 to 1998. Sc-128 finae fight 3 super 25 in 1.jpg|SC-128 with Final Fight 3. Sc-130 super photo-gun 13 in 1.jpg|SC-130. QQ-9099.jpg|QQ-9099, based on JY-099. Super_22-in-1_QQ-901.jpg|QQ-901 Game Boy Color multicart. Super 5-in-1.JPG|Super Famicom cart in a similar style as the QQ-901 cart. Pack-6-in-1-super-ball-snes-super-nintendo.jpg|Another Super Famicom cart. The soccer ball matches the one seen on JY-014. 105-in-1 Z-A1U105-49.jpg|Z-A1U105-49. Note the border around the images and the use of WordArt for the title. References External link *List of known JY-XXX carts. Category:Companies from Taiwan Category:Publishers Category:Ei-How Yang Category:J.Y. Company Category:Hummer Team Category:Vast Fame